Speaking Sensis

People pretending that online local search is replacing print directories are missing a far more exciting reality… that local search is growing rapidly.

For a long time now, I’ve marvelled at how online industry commentators seem fascinated with death.

As a child of the dot.com boom, I vividly recall claims of the imminent Internet-related death of many industries.

I remember having a debate with an employer in the late 90s who firmly believed that by 2005, bricks and mortar travel agents would be gone forever.

And I’ve listened for over a decade now to people saying that print media was going to go down the gurgler.

You read and hear these claims all over the place. And comments like “there is no doubt that the directory is dead” (which was recently trumpeted by an eager Australian industry identity) show that Yellow Pages® print directories are far from immune from these accusations.

You get a sense from all this doom and gloom that the local search market is static.

Not growing.

Like a pie that’s being voraciously chomped up by the new local search players.

But the reality is far more interesting… and exciting for the industry. The local search pie is actually growing – and pretty quickly by the look of things.

Take the Yellow Pages® network for example. This network includes all the different products and services that contain Yellow Pages® advertiser content.

In 2008 (1):

• Last 7 day usage of Yellow Pages® print directories grew by 4.9%. Yes, you did read the word ‘grew’ correctly.
• Online usage of local search sites carrying Yellow Pages® content (yellowpages.com.au, whereis.com.au, Google Maps and MyLocal) grew by 30%.
• Voice usage, through services like Call Connect and 1234, grew by 10%.

And ‘MoLo’, or local search sites on your mobile phone (Yellow™ Mobile and Whereis® Mobile), grew by a whopping 190% from March quarter of 2008 to March quarter 2009. Yes, it’s growing from a small base, but, at this rate, it won’t be small for long.

Clearly this data suggests that the number of buyers using local search in all its forms is growing rapidly.

In fact, when I look at these trends, I can’t help thinking that there’s a real elasticity in local search. It seems like the more options you give local search users, the more they search… and the more services they use.

In other words, it looks like local search users aren’t trending from one channel to another. They’re tending to use both.

And there’s a statistic that demonstrates this.

Migration means people shifting away from print. The claim is that online users have no use for print directories anymore, so they don’t use them.

So, clearly, you’d expect to see heavy (at least daily) Internet users turning away from Yellow Pages® print directories. As a result, the percentage of them using print would be much lower than for the rest of the population.

But the data actually tells quite a different story. It shows that daily online users are just as likely to use Yellow Pages® print directories as people who don’t use the Internet as often or don’t use it at all (2).

I’d draw three conclusions from this data.

Firstly, that print directories aren’t declining in the way people claim.

Secondly, that the local search audience is actually growing pretty quickly. As I said, this is a far more exciting story than the doom and gloom claimed by many in the online industry.

And, thirdly (and most importantly), if you really want to make the most of local search, your advertising needs to be everywhere… across print, online, voice and mobile.

Which is a great segue into the final article in this series – DIVERSE.

Look out for it in the next few days. Or check out part 1 of the Sensis on local search series – BIG.